Projects of the Paris Master Astrophysics program

For more than 10 years, students from the Paris Master Astrophysics program (Paris M2 AAIS) have visited the IRAM-30m telescope together with their tutors to conduct short, dedicated research projects. This Masters Program is a joint program between Sorbonne, Paris Diderot, and Paris Sud University, Observatoire de Paris and Ecole Normale Superieure.

Project 169-21 focussed on the environment of NGC1275, to start mapping the giant filamentary nebula around the galaxy which is a member of the Perseus cluster. This is the most iconic of all Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) nebula, which are believed to be the smoking guns of the impact of AGN feedback on galactic scales. It is planned to perform the first fully-sampled CO(2-1) map of the Southern East filamentary region to assess the total cold gas content and map its large scale kinematics. Before, till 2020, the projects have focussed on two ojects: the Cepheus L1251A and B star-forming regions, and, the starburst galaxy M82.

The Cepheus project mapped the 12CO, 13CO and C18O line emission in and around the Cepheus L1251A and L1251B star-forming clumps. The spectral line properties allowed to characterise the kinematics of the cloud, to disentangle between the quiescent and turbulent kinematics, and to estimate precisely the momentum rate injected in the clump by entrained gas from jet-driven outflows associated with protostellar sources. The aim was to test theories of outflow-regulated cluster formation (Nakamura & Li 2014) and constrain the role of protostellar outflows to maintain turbulence on the typical scales of a protocluster, by comparing the turbulence dissipation rate in the
protocluster to the outflow momentum injection rate.

The star formation process was studied in the starburst galaxy M82 through measuring excitation conditions from the largest possible number of molecules. In the era of Herschel, ALMA, and NOEMA,
molecules have turned out to be powerful diagnostics of the physical conditions in a broad range of environments and objects. These include the emission from starburst vs. AGN components in galaxies.

The data taken at the telescope are openly available here. Below, we list the project-IDs, titles, and the names of the investigators who have led these projects as tutors.

• 169-21 Mapping and weighting the molecular web around NGC1275
• 131-20 Turbulence and protostellar outflows in the Cepheus dense clumps (Pierre Guillard, Anaelle Maury)
• 155-19 Turbulence and protostellar outflows in the Cepheus dense clumps (Pierre Guillard, Anaelle Maury, Matthias Gonzalez, Bilal Ladjelate)
• 138-18 Turbulence and protostellar outflows in the Cepheus dense clumps (Pierre Guillard, Anaelle Maury, Stephane Corbel, Matthias Gonzalez)
• 124-17 Protostellar outflows and turbulence in the Cepheus dense clumps (Stephane Corbel)
• 140-16 Protostellar outflows and turbulence in the Cepheus dense clumps (Anaelle Maury & Stephane Corbel)
• 142-15 Characterizing the turbulence and protostellar outflows in the L1251B protocluster (Anaelle Maury & Stephane Corbel)
• 167-14 Characterizing the turbulence and protostellar outflows in the L1251B protocluster (Anaelle Maury & Stephane Corbel)
• D04-13 Paris M2 AAIS survey of M82 (Jacques Le Bourlot & Charlene Lefevre)
• D06-12 Paris M2 AAIS survey of M82 (Jacques Le Bourlot & Charlene Lefevre)
• D06-11 Isotopic ratios in M82 (Jacques Le Bourlot)

The data are available as 30m files, which can be read with CLASS/GILDAS.